I suggested that an Iron Plough would be lighter.
>A ploughshare and coulter made of iron might be made lighter than a set
>made of bronze; however when you distribute that extra weight over a
>team of 4 to 8 oxen and consider that most of the weight is in the frame
>and the mouldboard, then I do not see any measurable increase in efficiency.
I was really thinking of a single ox-driven plough. However I realize the cost of the metal alone makes this a rather silly proposition. The only alternative, I can think of is that magical copper ploughs are used instead (purely for their association with earth).
>Roman merchants may have discovered that spanish urine was superior
>purely by accident. Urine may have been imported from many sources
>as well as gathered locally. The spanish urine was empirically found to
>produce a better result. Aging and evaporation could easily explain this.
The reason why I am skeptical is the question why were the romans importing urine in the first place? With a population of a million (and some are heavy winedrinkers to boot), the Roman Textile Industry can't be that productive! Rather I think, that the value of spanish urine was discovered by local dye merchants (under the Barcids?) and later imported by Romans.
>Maybe there is someone in the medical field who could give some input
>on this issue. As far as I know, human piss is all about the same when it
>comes out. Diet and physiology don't make too much of a difference, the
>water soluble by-products of metabolism are much the same for all of us.
Of the top of my head, Vegetarian Urine is yellower on average, diabetics have excess sugar and so on.
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